3 broadband have just told me it's impossible to accurately monitor data transfer (yet their website does the impossible?)
However I just had a thought, the network connection settings thingy in the control panel monitors it, by the byte. Can a program grab these numbers
from windows anywhere?
I'll be posting this in other forums too so hopefully I'll get a lot of darn good information on this
It is perfectly possible to do this however the investment to manage effectively makes the service more expensive as you need to build collectors and
storage, it is now no-longer cost effective to be an ISP.
They probally have tools that pick the highusers and target these + monitor popular download sites or protocols and sample... 1/10000 maybe and see
who keeps popping up.
Regards Mark
Sorry should have explained the situation. I use 3 broadband (I know I know) when I'm at work. Their dongle comes with this software that tells
me how much data has been transferred. However their website has a "Data remaining" page and there's a 2.7 GIGABYTE discrepancy.
What I'm really asking is could the dongle software take the data from windows, and therefore be deadly accurate?
I suspect not, it probally looks at the WAN nic for this, have a look at the counter in properties on your network connection. This will be a constant
whatever software or version of windows you are running.
So if you are on a corporate network as well as have a virtual connection set up it will record the packets in and out of the machine even if they are
not all appropriate to the virtual connection.
Your work traffic is counting against you giving rise to the discrepancy.
Its all a bit irrellevent, ff they try and bill you or restrict access ask them to prove the accuracy, if they cannot then they have to favour you.
Regards Mark
I'm only using one connection at a time, right now it's the mobile one.
So windows counts the packets that go through, thus the dongle software should be accurate by use of simple maths (addition)
Perfectly plausable to count the tcp/ip Packets going across the link the MTU will give you the size of the packet and this will ultimately give you a
data flow.
Vista has sidebar gadgets that will graph though put os there is no reason when these coudn;t e modified to be an accumulicator.
The windows data is highly inaccurate
i wouldnt use it for any sort of reliable figures
Thanks
Mike
Are 2 saying you have used more transfer via your 3g dongle than you say via the dongle software?
I would say use something like down2home if your on XP. You can specify which interfaces it monitors
I'm with Demon internet with a 40gb/50gb, cant remember exactly, limit. They remind me when i'm getting near my limit, so they must monitor
my usage.
There are website that monitor speeds, but i'm not convinced they are as accurate as they make out.
On fixed line it's easy - you're on a dedicated port so they can just take the stats from that.
On mobile, not so easy as you're roaming around.
Would guess they're taking stats from either your APN or the SSG. Either way, it probably won't exactly match up with what you see on your
laptop as it may or may not include encapsulation headers etc...
Is the 2.7Gig in your favour? If so, just keep schtum..
quote:
Originally posted by mark chandler
it is now no-longer cost effective to be an ISP.
Unless you have been using it abroad, they will increase the count if you go aboard. you may get billed to 2gb when you have only actually used
1gb.
somthing to do with cross network charging
quote:
Originally posted by stevebubs
Is the 2.7Gig in your favour? If so, just keep schtum..
